❝ Brewed Awakening ❞ — amusingmurdermachine
❝ My First Kiss ❞ — oneshot shop ; I'm sorry but we're closed :)
requester : amusingmurdermachine
Above the wooden-rimmed glass door hung a tiny rooster bell that would ring everytime a customer walked in.
Which so happen to be right then.
Which turned out not to be a customer, as it was 7 in the morning and the coffee shop won’t open until 9.“Good morning Chanyeol.” A girl who was busy setting up the coffee machine greeted the just arriving boy.
“Hi Luna.” He said as he rushed back to the storage room and prepped up for the service hours.When he finally walked out from the room with a black apron tied nicely around his waist, he saw Luna on the other side of the room with a vase of ornate flower bouquet.
“What’s with that thing?”“This? Soo Jung asked me to put this up.” Luna said as she admired her amateur interior design and nodded in satisfaction.
“Why?” For as long as he remembered, Soo Jung hates roses, especially the pink one, to the point where she spent extra money to tear down the shop’s old wallpaper just because it was adorned with thousands of tiny pink roses. But looking at that bouquet, it consisted purely of roses, and most of them were pink.Luna shrugged, “I don’t know, maybe she knocked her head?”
She skipped toward him, a grin on her face. She spared a moment to stop beside him and whispered, “or maybe she’s in love with someone.”That statement took Chanyeol aback. But by the time he stopped cringing and began to deny and said ‘What’s that has to do with me?!’ repeatedly, Luna’s giggle had been starting to fade in the distance.
The day unfolded like any usual days. Lots of take-away in the morning and only by mid noon was the shop started to be filled with patrons looking for a place to have lunch.
But Chanyeol couldn’t set his mind off the flower bouquet at the far corner of the room. Why? What? Is Soo Jung really fell for someone? But more importantly, where is she?
“Pssh! Luna!” He whispered loudly as he tried to get her attention off the dishes she was doing.“What?!” She had no time for a chat. The customers kept on coming and the numbers of clean cups were quickly declining.
“Where’s Soo Jung?”“I don’t know! Why are you asking me?”
“She’s supposed to be here like, 2 hours ago! Do you think anything might - oh! Good day what can I help you?” He automatically whipped his head back facing the front of the cashier when the rooster bell rang. He expected a customer, but what he got was a ruffle on his hair.“What did I tell you about no chatting in rush hours?” A familiar smile relieved half of Chanyeol’s anxiety.
“You’re late yourself.” Luna huffed to her as she carried a tray full of clean cups to the rack beside the coffee machine.“Yeah, yeah, I’m sorry, whatever,” Soo Jung snickered at Luna.
But Chanyeol could see that even though she had a smile on her face, Soo Jung was being slightly jittery. She kept looking at the door, then at her wristwatch. At the door, then at her watch, then at the door again, then she would bite her lips and sighed.“Are you expecting someone?”
“Yeah… No… I don’t really know, honestly,” she checked her watch once more, “he said he’d come, but knowing him, I wouldn’t say for sure.”'He? Oh . Is she dating someone now? Why?!' No… No. He told himself to stop worrying about someone’s private life, especially not his employer.
Suddenly, the bell rang. Once. Twice. Thrice. Then a long continuous loud jingle that went on for a few seconds before Soo Jung came to the rescue.“Nice bell, where did you buy it? I want one.” The guy said while he was being dragged in by Soo Jung.
“No.” She answered in a stern voice. She stopped in front of Chanyeol and tilted the guy’s head downward to face the menu, “pick one and be quick.”The guy hummed and scratched his chin, seemingly undisturbed with Soo Jung’s hand on his head. “Hmm… Boy, give me some pumpkin spice latte with 5 marshmallows on top. 5 okay, no more, no less. 5.”
He then spun around, freeing himself from Soo Jung clutch and practically waltzed across the room to sit at the corner seat by the window.Chanyeol could only look at him with a confused expression on his face.
Soo Jung shook her head, “I’m sorry, he's a bit weird, I know.”“Who’s he?” Chanyeol whispered to her. He couldn’t take his eyes away from the guy, as there seemed to be a weird aura that surrounded him. Sure enough, his personality was eccentric, but his physical appearance was not helping him at all. A shoulder length disheveled wavy hair, a huge thick rimmed glass, oversized sweater with coffee stains on it, a knee length khaki pants, and a dress shoes. He didn’t look right, but he didn’t look wrong either.
“He?” Soo Jung scoffed at the direction of the guy’s seat, “He’s my boyfriend.”At that moment it seemed like the one of the foundations of his beliefs crashed down.
“WHAT?!” He and Luna, who was back on his side at the counter because she’d done all the washes, shouted quite loudly at the same time that even some patrons turned their heads toward them.Soo Jung tried to stay serious, but in the end, she gave up. “Oh my god, you should see your faces!” She said in between her laughter, “He’s just an acquaintance. Nothing much, really.”
They both sighed in relief.“I thought you’d gone crazy,” Luna shook her head, “He’s nowhere near your usual type.”
“Anyways, don’t forget about his 5 marshmallows, he’d go crazy if he didn’t get exactly that.” Soo Jung tapped Chanyeol on his shoulder before she went on to join her eccentric friend.Halfway down, she turned her head and shouted, “Oh! And don't forget to give me the usual stuff!”
Usual stuff… Vanilla latte. Vanilla. Chanyeol always thought that Soo Jung was the vanilla type of girl. A bit stern, yes, but he always thought that she’s into the standard type of guy. Now he was looking at the pair at the corner of the store and he started to doubt all his previous judgments on her.
“Okay, what do you want from me.” Soo Jung said to the guy.
Soo Jung rolled her eyes and complied, but the sight she caught made her skin crawl. Roses. Pink roses. Lot’s of pink roses.
“What did you do?” She hissed at him. © Alana, R 2013. all rights reserved.“I set it up especially for you.”
“You bastard.” She stood up slightly and landed a hard smack on his head.“It’s just a joke! It’s just a joke!” He only laughed back in return, as if he’d been through a lot of that his whole life.
Soo Jung sat back down and snickered. Her arms folded in front of her body and she refused to look at the guy.“Oooh I love you so much Soo Jung.” The guy said while still trying to catch his breath from all the laughing.
It just so happen that Chanyeol was standing right beside their table, when he said the phrase. You know, delivering their orders. He almost dropped the tray.“Ah, the drinks are here.” The guy took the cups from him after a while had went and Chanyeol was too petrified to personally serve them their coffees.
“What’s wrong boy?” The guy startled him out from his mind.“N… Nothing,” Chanyeol stuttered. He whispered a rushed ‘enjoy’ before making his way out with an awkward stumble-shuffle hybrid.
When the guy was sure that Chanyeol was out from his hearing range, he said, “I think that boy has a crush on you.”Pouting Soo Jung was obviously startled; as she jumped a little on her seat and her facial feature softened a bit, but she managed keep her facade.
“Just shut up Heechul.”“Yeah, you’re welcome, Soo Jung.”
“Chanyeol… Chanyeol! CHANYEOl!!!” Luna shouted at him when she saw the cup he was handling was starting to overflow.
He snapped off his trance and muttered some profanities while he rushed to get some paper towel.
“Great. How long had that been running? How many liters of water have you wasted before I came here? Huh? HUH?!” Luna had her hands on her hips and she was just fuming out.“I’m sorry okay? I didn’t mean it to happen.” He wiped the spilled coffee off the table, but again, his eyes were not where it should be looking.
Since he heard that sentence coming out from the guy’s, Heechul’s, mouth, his mind couldn’t stop wandering off. What did he hear exactly? ‘I love you Soo Jung.’ Was it a misheard sentence? Yes. Was it misinterpreted? Definitely. But hearing the correct context of the sentence wouldn’t give him any help by that point.“Chanyeol!” Luna had to shout at him again when his hand was starting to wander off the table and was literally wiping thin air.
He realized the embarrassing thing he was doing and quickly hid his hands behind his back.“Look, I know it must be hard for you to see the current situation, but you have to snap out of it.”
“What are you talking about? I’m not… I’m not… OUCH!” He was being stubborn enough to keep on denying his painfully obvious jealousness that Luna had to give him a barrage of persistent slaps on both side of his neck.“Snap! Out! Of! It!” She said a syllable with every slaps she landed on his neck.
Before he could do anything back to her, she gracefully dodged his attempted attack and ran to the kitchen with her tongue sticking out to mock him even further.He could only sigh and stare down at the counter top.
Don’t glance up, don’t glance up.But he did anyway, even though he knew the scene at the far corner of the room wouldn’t change even a bit. They were engaged in a lively chat. A laugh here and a laugh there. He never saw Soo Jung laughing as freely as that. A few occasional playful slaps by Soo Jung… Even though if he really looked into it, if he really scrutinized and disected the scene, he could see it was far more violent than a playful slap. The universal slap between annoyed siblings, perhaps? And if he really listened to the conversation, he would’ve heard the word ‘’ and ‘jerk’ being exchanged between the two sides quite often.
But he wouldn’t have noticed, because he was standing too far from them, obviously.
The rush hour was coming to an end and the bell was finally not ringing every 3 minutes anymore. Chanyeol was busy tidying and cleaning up the tables, but you guess it, his gaze would just so often casually wander off to a place where it certainly didn’t belong. A mop on his hands and an empty expression on his face, he looked like a depressed animatronic helping-bot.
“Hot food coming through, hot food coming through.” It was a usual thing for Luna to shout those words everytime she came out with a heated bowl of hot chocolate for an order of sweet fondue.
Maybe it was so usual that he didn’t realize she was coming his way before it was too late.“Move away, move away, move away!” Too late. They bumped and the content on her tray slid off to the side.
What was the first thing Chanyeol thought of? ‘THAT BOWL IS FRIGGIN EXPENSIVE.’ He knew it because he bought it together with Soo Jung.And so, in an attempt that was far from graceful, and obviously stupid, he dived down to the floor and caught the bowl with his bare hand. Not to mention that it turned upside down mid-fall and so his hand landed right in the goop of the piping hot chocolate.
After having a firm grip of the bowl, he quickly stood up and faced the terribly terrified Luna with a proud grin on his face.In the quick time lapse of that grin turning into a grimace, all the remaining patrons in the room had turned their attention to the ruckus and they broke into a collective gasp patrons usually do when utensils fell or someone shattered their cup on the floor. Even louder were Soo Jung’s worried shouts and the ear-piercing scraping sound of her chair against the tile that was followed by a loud thud as it toppled over
“To the kitchen! Quick, quick, QUICK!” Soo Jung pushed the now fully grimacing Chanyeol toward the kitchen sink.Soo Jung opened the faucet in a hurry and stuck his hand under the gushing water.
“Oh my god, I’m sorry, I’m so so sorry.” Luna stood restlessly behind the kitchen door.“No, no, no, it was all my fault,” he told her after he gained enough of his composure back, “I am sorry.”
Soo Jung let loose a barrage of almost unintelligible set of words that if taken into literal context loosely meant, ‘stupid. I’m so worried about you.’His hand was by then already clean from chocolate, but an attempt of taking it out from the running tap was denied by Soo Jung, whose hands were holding his firmly on the arm and wrist.
Luna, knowing that something was starting to boil under the surface, smiled to herself and resigned from the room. “I’m going to clean up some… Stuffs.” She muttered under her breath.Once they were completely alone, Soo Jung took a deep breath and exhaled it loudly. She seemed angry, so he tried to console her by saying,
“I saved the bowl…?”“I don’t care about the bowl!” She snapped back at him, “What if that tray carried a hotplate? What if that tray carried a pot of boiling tea? What if it carried candles or knives or hydrochloric acid?! What then?!”
She huffed and once again took a deep breath and let out a slower, wheezing, exhale, “That’s why you should keep your eyes to yourself!”Chanyeol blinked several times before his eyes turned wide and his face started to blush, “You realized?”
“Of course I do!” She nudged his head forward. In a softer, hushed, tone, she added, “And what did I tell you, he wasn’t my boyfriend.”He looked at her funny. Crooked eyebrow, judging eyes, he didn’t believe her.
“Whatever you think he is, he’s not.” She leaned back a bit and took a peek at the front floor. Her eyes met with their subject of conversation and he gave her an enthusiastic wave.She shook her head and sighed, “He is my brother.”
Chanyeol’s eyes widen up again, this time because of pure shock, “But he doesn’t look anywhere like you!”“He took a different set of genes I guess?!” She said when she finally took his hand out from the running tap. It had turned slightly flushed, but it hurt much less than it originally was.
“How’s it now?”“Better.” He said, a taint of nervousness in his voice when she started to flip his hand around, circling her thumbs softly against the contours of his palm and running her fingers carefully across the length of his own fingers.
“Just keep it under the running water and it would be okay.” She gave his hand a few gentle pats before in a turn of event, raised it and pressed her lips against his palm.He would lie if he said that it didn’t burn. Her lips and the soft breaths that escaped from them were hot and it heightened the burning sensation on his hand. But the kisses were so soft, and gentle, and it felt strangely amazing as it grazed his skin from the base of his palm to the tips of his fingers.
When she finally lowered it down, a hint of embarrassment was apparent on her face as she carefully folded his hand and enclosed it with her own, but she hid it with a ginger smile, “A ‘get well’ kiss, my mom do it to me all the time.”He was speechless. His could swear that his jaw hinges broke and he just stared at her with a dumb, witless expression.
Thank goodness someone came to the rescue. Or not. Nah, surely not.“Liar, liar, pants on fire.” Soo Jung’s brother leaned against the doorframe with his arm crossed and a cheeky grin on his face, “Mom never do that, you’re just making up things.”
“Oh, shut up, Heechul.” She gestured him to go away, but he only leaned forward as he stared Chanyeol dead in the eye.“You know what boy, go for it.” Heechul wiggled his eyebrow at him before a slap on the back of the head sent him out of the kitchen laughing.
“I’m so sorry for him.”“That’s… That’s okay.” He tried his best to give a coherent answer and to keep his voice from quivering.
She glanced down at their hand, placed on top of each other, and she felt unsure. Should she stay? Or should she go?“Maybe I should… go… take some, um, first aid kit or something at the back.” She flashed him a quick smile and was about to take her hands off his when she felt his palm opened and in turn encased her hand in a soft grip.
“Wait,” Chanyeol could slowly see the smile on her face turn into a slightly uncertain anticipation.
“Soo Jung, I… I…” Even though his mind was churning out sentences at 50 mph, the nerves that connect his brain to his vocal chord wouldn’t cooperate. He had to act quickly though, as the momentum was beginning to thin out.
In the end, a small voice on the back of his mind pierced through his clouded mind saying, ‘Just go for it.’
And so he did.
Chanyeol shook off all his rational thought and powered his movement with the core content of his guts. He lunged his body forward but stopped when he was just a fraction of hair away from Soo Jung’s face. A stray thought that popped to his mind was, ‘No. Maybe she doesn’t want this to happen.’
And so there he was, holding his breath while uncomfortably hovering over her face. So close, yet he didn’t want to put her in that kind of situation. But when he wanted to back away, he felt her hand creeping slowly up his back and finally stopping on the base of his neck.
Her fingers gave a firm pressure on his skin, slowly bringing his head down, reducing their distance even further that their nose touched. Then even lower that he could feel her soft breathing on his upper lip, and finally, low enough for their lips to touch.
It wasn’t demanding and it wasn’t rushed. It felt soft, and warm, and nicely rewarding, not to mention the unmistakable scent of vanilla of coffee that faintly laced her lips.
A smile slowly crept on Soo Jung’s face. The same thing happened with Chanyeol. What began as a little set of giggles was blown up to an all out laugh. And laughing is not complete without a bear hug.
So there they were, in the middle of the kitchen, hugging each other tight while laughing their heart out like crazy.
“It wasn’t that hard, huh?” Soo Jung did a little jump as she said this, a wave of gladness washed over her as she finally got the guts to throw away her denials and face her raw emotion.
“No, I guess,” Chanyeol, who was still hard on believing the last few seconds of his life really happened, could only wrap his arm around her body even tighter to make sure that she wasn’t just something out of his imagination.
“Come, then,” she reached to her back to get ahold of his hand. With a tender , she managed to persuade him to untangle his fingers and moved her body away from him.
Soo Jung slowly backed away to the kitchen door, leading him away with little gentle tugs on his hands. He couldn’t guess what she was going to do with him. But looking at the mischievous smile on her face, the thing she said next was quite predictable.
“I want you to meet my brother.”
Chanyeol could feel a shiver went through his body, “Is he going to do anything to me?”
“I hope so!” She threw her head back in a fit of gleeful laughter. Once she winded down, she gave his hand a quick peck, “we’ll take it slow.”
“Take it slow? You’re introducing me to your brother! That’s not slow.”
“Nah, I just want you to persuade him to let me throw out that hideous roses.”
“And if I succeed?”
“That, my boy, will be for another occasion.” She gave him a wink.
At first, he wasn’t entirely convinced that it would be worth it. But when he saw her tongue darted quickly across her lips, everything was set for him.
“Deal.”
Make Room for ze Amazing Author!
First of all, thank you so much for requesting :D. I hope you like this, I really do hope you like this. If there are any grammatical mistakes, please forgive me. Aaand I don't know what else to say... See you soon?
© Alana, R 2013. all rights reserved.
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